THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO RUPERT MURDOCH

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was GOTCHA! And the Lord Rupert said let there be a Royal Family, and let enormous quantities of trivia and drivel be written about them, yeah even unto the point where a lobotomised amoeba couldn’t find it interesting any more, and let babies be born unto this Royal Family, and let the huge swathes of sycophantic, nauseating sludge written about them surpass even that written about their parents, even though these babies and their parents are about as interesting as a wet afternoon watching an endless slow motion loop tape of Phil Collins live at Selhurst Park.

And the Lord Rupert said let there be soap operas, and reality TV shows, and let each and every one be so mind-numbingly moronic as to make a wet afternoon watching an endless slow motion loop tape of Phil Collins live at Selhurst Park seem a truly uplifting experience, and let entire forests be destroyed and the very existence of our planet jeopardised in the endless vistas of retarded outpourings about these unspeakable transmissions.

And let there be enormous breasts, and endless bonking, and days and weeks and months and years of chauvinistic right wing propaganda, so that the people who like the bonking and the soap operas and the breasts and the royal stories get the politics as well.

And let any journalist who tries to stand up to the proprietor and editor in the name of truth, and integrity, and intelligence, and journalistic standards, be summarily dismissed, and cast into a bottomless pit of decomposing chimpanzee smegma, and let those journalists who suffer this fate rejoice at the great career move they have just made.

And the Lord Rupert looked at his work, and even he saw that it was a load of crap, but this was the enterprise culture and it sold millions so it was good. And on the same basis he decided to buy the whole world, and the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains, and the whole thing was filmed by Sky Channel for a horror nature programme, and the most awful thing was that this was just the beginning……

ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER



This guest post by Attila the Stockbroker came with the following introduction which is being placed at the end to avoid interrupting the joy of the work above:

I wrote this some years ago after one of Murdoch's subsidiaries took over publishing firm William Collins, which among other things has the rights to the New International version of the English Bible. Given Mr Murdoch's track record in journalism and publishing - he is like Midas in reverse, all that he touches turns to shit - I thought it was time for a New Revised Version.

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Tits Up

There's a discrepancy between what I write about in my poetry and what I write about to friends and family, via social media, email etc.  I recently had cause to trawl through some old emails and I quickly discovered a theme which I don't think I was aware of at the time the emails were written.  Looking at the messages from 2005, I can see that I was struggling financially.  There were sleepless nights and there was jaw clenching and gnashing of teeth, not to mention swearing and moaning at a calamity of call centres.

It's 2013 and I find myself, once more, gnashing and swearing about money.  The slippery eel has squirmed from my grasp again.  Take your eyes off it and it's away.  My income dropped considerably after finishing the degree (the grant and student loan had bolstered my income while I studied) but I'd signed financial contracts back then that continue now, when the income has fallen.  Basically, I didn't do the math. 

And so I feel guilty, a feeling backed up by the folks at Nat West.  One customer disservice agent in particular seemed to take great pleasure in patronising me, asking how I got into this mess.  Fuckwit.  But this guilt I feel, where does it come from?  Because I was on top of the debt until June, when I was a couple of days late with a payment and suddenly - bam!  Charges put me over a limit and then - bam!  Fees for being over the limit.  So a monthly budget which was precariously balanced, and we'd been tightening our belts for months to keep on top of it, is tipped into the zone where you have to talk to fuckwits on the phone and feel the guilt and explain where you spend every penny of your income. 

I seem to remember a news story about large financial institutions fucking up their finances, taking risks with money that didn't pay off and winding up with trillions of pounds worth of debt.  Do the people who made those decisions feel guilt?  Or did they take home their hundreds of thousands of pounds and sleep on a pillow stuffed with the cash taken from our national coffers?  When I'm late with a payment to the bank I get charged.  When someone is late paying me (and as someone who relies on self-employment for part of her income this is a regular occurrence) I get to squirm uncomfortably and hope they get round to paying me in the near future.  Across the country, people continue tightening their belts.  The cost of everything keeps rising and incomes remain stagnant or fall.  Life at the bottom continues, as it always has, to be a little bit shit.    

This is a familiar theme in many households. It's not a theme I usually bring to my poetry because political poetry is really hard to get right.  So I'll not try for anything fancy, just a short rhyming verse that tells it like I think it is.   

Tits Up

We whine about paying for butter and eggs

Fuel prices creep up by the day

We used to go out now we stay home in bed

Portillo's alone on the train

It costs more to live in a buy to rent flat

Than the mortgage you'd pay on a house

And luxuries now include food for the cat

That skiver should work; catch a mouse.

No wonder pyjamas are worn in the streets

Don't need formal clobber where we live

We're workers, indebted, meat for the elite

Forbidden to tweet and forbidden to meet

Eternally fed on the chaff, not the wheat

A step out of line is an invite to beat

The status quo scoffs while our welfare depletes

And they're timing our shits while they sip from the teat

We are legion.  We do not, we will not, we cannot forgive.

 

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